


The Amazing Dr. Laurel

by SeeEmRunning



Category: Better Off Ted
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 15:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2552024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeEmRunning/pseuds/SeeEmRunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a woman in the lab who talks to no one but Bhamba. Most of them don't even know she exists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Amazing Dr. Laurel

**Author's Note:**

> I deal with my problems through writing fanfiction, and I've watched a lot of Better Off Ted lately. Don't judge, yo.
> 
> Written in under twelve hours.

Sometimes, in the office, you get a nasty surprise.  
   
"They changed the creamer to hazelnut!" Sheila complains.  
   
Sometimes, you get a good surprise.  
   
"Hey, Ted," Bhamba says excitedly, "we weaponized the pumpkin seeds, too."  
   
Sometimes, you get a surprise that's so overwhelming, you don't know what to do. Such is the case this morning, when I go down to Dr. Bhamba's lab to look at the weaponized seeds.  
   
"Sha la la la la la Bhamba!" an overweight brunette sings, swinging around in her rolling chair. When she sees it's not Bhamba who'd come in, her mouth snaps closed and she turns a mottled red. Her hand closes, vicelike, around the silver tree-of-life pendant she always wears around her neck.  
   
"Hey, Dr. Laurel. Whatcha got for me? Bhamba said you'd weaponized the seeds?" Laurel nods at the table and says something, too quiet for me to hear. "Sorry, what?"  
   
She swallows. "I said, they're in the third bin. Use gloves."  
   
She's still too quiet to hear clearly, but I had expected that. See, Laurel has horrible anxiety. She doesn't come to the meetings, she doesn't weigh in on departmental decisions - she just does her work, keeps her head down, and goes home at the end of each day. When she'd first been paired with Bhamba seven years ago, we'd all been worried, but after a brief decline in productivity, the weapons she produces became more terrifying than ever. Not that she ever gets credit; Bhamba is the one who speaks at meetings and presents the research, so the other lab workers think he's responsible for everything. I'm not even sure they know she exists, to be honest, and that's just the way she likes it.  
   
The only time their partnership's been broken up in the last seven years was when she was in the hospital following a mishap with the weapons. Lem's white guy had wandered into the wrong lab in the morning and pressed something he shouldn't have pressed, and she'd been bedridden for over a week. I'd had to assign _three people_ to cover for her while Bhamba worked on weaponizing a pumpkin, but when I went to visit her in the hospital, she was more outgoing than I'd ever seen her. She actually said 'hi' without blushing and then told an off-color joke.  
   
"Sorry," Dr. Bhamba had said when we'd left. "She's on a lot of medication."  
   
"I don't mind a bit," I'd assured him.  
   
Laurel had turned bright red and spun around to look through an empty microscope that wasn't even plugged in the next time I came into the lab, but hey. What can you do?  
   
I pull on gloves and open the box, trying to ignore Laurel watching me. Her breathing is loud in the small room and far too even for her to be doing anything other than holding back a panic attack. See, I know she does it, but I like to give her practice. Get her used to me. It's been fourteen years since she came to work for us, and while she's not there yet, she also isn't breathing into a paper bag anymore whenever we're in the same room, so clearly the repeated exposure is working to some degree.  
   
"How did you weaponize the seeds?" I ask her now.  
   
"Genetic splicing," she says, so quiet she can barely be heard.  
   
"What did you splice it with?"  
   
"Nightshade, king cobra, and ghost pepper."  
   
"How'd you cross the kingdom barrier?"  
   
If she was a little less uptight, she would laugh. The 'kingdom barrier' doesn't exist, to the best of my knowledge, it's just a useless little phrase I made up that's hopefully clear enough she understands I'm asking how they spliced animal DNA with plant.  
   
She actually stands up and comes around so we're in each other's line of sight, though she keeps a good ten feet of space between us and leans pretty heavily on the lab tables. For a moment, when she was sitting, I'd been able to ignore it, but standing, it's obvious: her left shoulder is a good inch below her right and she rocks back and forth when she walks. It's a holdover from some kind of birth defect or childhood deformity that's been corrected as much as it can be. She's a chronic pain patient, I remember belatedly.  
   
"It wasn't hard, in the end," she says. "The right enzymes can do almost anything."  
   
"So what are the right enzymes?" She hands me a sheet of paper with thirty names like _1,4-dichloro-2,3,7-trimethyl-2-hexen-5-ol._ "English, please?"  
   
"They break the DNA and splice it."  
   
"I know what enzymes do!"  
   
She shrinks a bit, and I realize: it's the most we've ever spoken. She's making an effort, and I'm yelling at her.  
   
"Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to yell."  
   
"It's fine," she says, clearly forcing a smile.  
   
"Well. Good talk. You up for presenting, or is Bhamba going to tell us?" She flinches, and I realize how accusing that sounds. "Well. I'll just leave you to it."  
   
I flee before I can scare her any more.  
   
The next day, I'm halfway to Veronica's office when Bhamba literally _grabs_ me and drags me into the men's room. "You're supposed to let me know before you go into my lab!" he snaps.  
   
"I thought that telling me about the pumpkin seeds was an invitation!" I snap back.  
   
"Well, it's not! You need to let me know so that I can prepare Laurel! Or shield her!"  
   
"Shield her from me? Do I look like someone she needs to be shielded from?"  
   
"It took her five hours to calm down after your little visit yesterday morning." Bhamba's voice is thick with frustration. "It's almost as bad as the red lab coat incident. Or when you put flowers in the lab and I had to administer an EpiPen! She cried for an hour because of the adrenaline flooding her system! Bottom line, Ted, you _must_ let me know when you change something, so that I can let _her_ know. She's the best of us, and every time she is thrown off her game she is likely to blow up the building!"  
   
"It's not as bad as all that."  
   
"How would you know?" Bhamba hisses, getting right up in my face. " _You_ do not know the chemicals we work with. _You_ are not the one preventing her from mixing ammonia and bleach in a closed container. _You_ are not the one she trusts. For some reason, _I_ am. And I protect that trust, Ted. Do you understand?"  
   
"Yes."  
   
"Good." Bhamba gives me one last dirty look and leaves. I straighten my tie in the mirror and continue to Veronica's office.  
   
"Ah, good, Ted," she says when I walk in. "Where are we on Octochicken 2.0?"  
   
"Well, it doesn't build webs in the ceiling, so it's an improvement."  
   
"Keep me posted."  
   
"Will do."  
   
Like I said in the beginning: sometimes you get bad surprises. Sometimes you get bad surprises. Sometimes you just plain get surprised.  
   
I've had a lot of bad surprises this week, so on Wednesday, after I drop Rose off at school, I hope for a quiet day.  
   
Alas, it is not to be.  
   
"Ted! Ted, you gotta do something," Phil says, running up to me almost before I get off the elevator.  
   
"The sentient slime for NASA got out of its container and it's threatening a tech," Lem says as the door dings closed behind me. "Nothing we've tried is working."  
   
"So how's the tech holding it back?" I ask, punching the button for the elevator so we can get down to the basement labs.  
   
"She has a gun. Concealed permit. She keeps shooting it."  
   
"Veridian allows its employees to have gun?" I ask, then instantly answer the question. "Oh, yeah, a sane company would ban guns. Of course we don't do that."  
   
The elevator ride seems to take forever, but in reality, we reach the bowels of the skyscraper in just under two minutes. "Which lab section?" I ask.  
   
"Bhamba's."  
   
"That would be why she has a gun," Phil says. "Hey, is she even cleared to be there?"  
   
"Depends who she is," I say, hurrying toward the lab. I hear another gunshot and break into an all-out sprint.  
   
The slime is quivering in the middle of the room. Dr. Laurel is backed up against the wall, ramming another - magazine? Clip? Who the hell knows what it's called? - into her weapon. Bhamba's on the other side of her, splashing it with random liquids.  
   
"Damn it, what the hell is this thing made of?" she yells, firing at a tentacle that reaches out for her.  
   
"Phil! Lem! What did you use?"  
   
"We may have gene-spliced an octopus with a fungus," Phil says.  
   
"Was it fucking bleeding tooth?" Laurel snaps.  
   
"Yes, actually, how did you-"  
   
"Because it's got bleeding fucking teeth!" Laurel screams at Lem. "Shut up and tell me where the brain is so I can double-tap the fucker!"  
   
"We need to back you against the wall more often," I say, grabbing a random beaker. "Really. Opens you up some."  
   
"Don't you throw that!" Bhamba yells. "It's experimental, you'll kill us all!"  
   
I put the beaker down.  
   
"The brain is in the center left," Phil says.  
   
She adjusts the gun and fires twice. The slime stops twitching. She glares at Phil and Lem. "What the fuck, assholes?"  
   
"It got out!" Phil protests.  
   
"Why wasn't it secured?"  
   
"Who are you, anyway?" Lem asks. "Because we've never seen you."  
   
"She's been here longer than either of you," I say, smoothing things over. "Lem - Phil - get the slime out of here." Trusting them to get the job done, I step over to Laurel. "Hey, doc. You okay?"  
   
"Fine," she says tersely, pulling her shirt up.  
   
"Whoa, hey, hey!" I say. "No call for that."  
   
"It's a flash-bang holster. You flash someone, and then there's a bang."  
   
She's thinner than I thought she was; without a shirt on, it's clear a lot of her apparent mass comes from her chest. She slides the gun into the holster attached to the center panel of her bra and pulls her shirt back down, hiding the curve of her waist beneath the boxy clothing. Her right hand instantly goes to her necklace.  
   
"We got most of it," Lem says. "We'll be back for the last of the slop."  
   
"We'll get it," Bhamba says.  
   
"No, really, we'll come back with the solvents, and we'll talk Carlos into helping-"  
   
"I said, we'll get it," Bhamba says firmly.  
   
"It's no problem-"  
   
"We. Will. Get. It."  
   
"Nice shooting," I tell Laurel hurriedly, and turn to usher Phil and Lem out of the weapons lab. I escort them back to their own lab, leave them, and return to the workspace of Bhamba and Laurel. I'm not one step in the door when I realize that Laurel's panicking and Bhamba's got her folded in a hug. Her head's buried in his chest while she hyperventilates. The death glare Bhamba shoots me convinces me to turn and flee.  
   
Maybe I can explain this to Veronica so that Laurel and Bhamba don't have to. But of course, Linda comes along to the meeting, and everything goes sideways.  
   
"They violated containment protocol _again?"_  Veronica yells. "That's the fifth time this year! Someone's going to get killed!"  
   
"Someone almost _was_ killed yesterday. Hey, by the by, what's the deal with letting scientists carry guns?"  
   
"You know, Linda, your constant judginess is getting a little old."  
   
"Sorry, Veronica, but seriously, Ted, what the _hell?_ "  
   
"Dr. Laurel's clearance level gives her several privileges," Veronica says with a tight smile. "She designs weapons system for the government."  
   
"So does Bhamba, and he doesn't carry a firearm! Wait, does Bhamba carry a firearm?"  
   
"Dr. Laurel is above Bhamba. She reports directly to the CEO, when she is required to report to us at all. The Department of Defense gives us funding, we give Dr. Laurel space, resources, and a salary. Dr. Bhamba handles the more...social aspects of the work, when it's declassified enough. In return, they collaborate on company projects. Is that all, Linda, or do you have more inane questions to ask?"  
   
"No. No, I'm good."  
   
"Good. Ted."  
   
"I'll deal with it."  
   
"Fine. You deal with the two idiots. I'll smooth things over with Dr. Laurel."  
   
"No! No, Veronica. She doesn't know you. She's barely able to manage speaking with me standing ten feet away. You go down there, one of them is going to punch you."  
   
Veronica tilts her head and gives me the shark's smile. "One of them?"  
   
"Bhamba's protective, and you don't need his protection," I say. "He'll choose her over you every time."  
   
"Oh, please, Bhamba's a pig and I'm an attractive woman."  
   
"You don't need him like she does," I argue. "You don't need anyone, haven't you proven that enough? But she needs him. This is the way she survives. She depends on the person she trusts to insulate her from the ones she doesn't. It took _four years_ for her to say anything to Bhamba beyond, _Pass me a graduated cylinder?_ You go down there, you destroy her chances of producing anything profitable for six months, minimum. Lem and Phil already cost maybe a week for her to start feeling safe in her lab again."  
   
"A week of productivity because they violated containment procedures. Again."  
   
"Yes! Wait. Veronica, no. _No._ "  
   
"We can't overlook five containment violations. They'll at least have to retake the procedure courses."  
   
"Fine. We can all live with that."  
   
"Good. Go smooth down Dr. Laurel's ruffled feathers. I'll deal with the idiots."  
   
Bhamba grabs my arm before I'm even inside this time. "Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't," he says, low and urgent.  
   
"What?"  
   
"Shooting something is apparently what she needed to feel safe here. She's on point. She's the scientist you wanted to hire. For the first time since we were assigned together seven years ago, she is _happy._ Do not fuck this up."  
   
"Veronica wants me to smooth her ruffled feathers."  
   
"Her feathers are smooth, my friend. Go back to the idiots who violated containment."  
   
Sometimes, bad surprises turn out to be good surprises. You just have to give them time.


End file.
